Editing Mesa (computer graphics) (section)

== History ==
{{Expand section|date=September 2014}}
Project initiator Brian Paul was a graphics hobbyist. He thought it would be fun to implement a simple 3D graphics library using the OpenGL API, which he might then use instead of VOGL (very ordinary GL Like Library).<ref name="intro">{{cite web |title=Mesa Introduction |url=http://mesa3d.org/intro.html |work=Mesa Team |access-date=8 June 2015 |archive-date=4 May 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150504222505/http://www.mesa3d.org/intro.html |url-status=dead }}</ref> Beginning in 1993, he spent eighteen months of part-time development before he released the software on the Internet in February 1995.<ref>{{cite web |title=Project History |url=https://docs.mesa3d.org/history.html |website=Mesa Documentation |access-date=11 March 2021}}</ref> The software was well received, and people began contributing to its development. Mesa started off by rendering all [[3D computer graphics]] on the [[CPU]]. Despite this, the internal architecture of Mesa was designed to be open for attaching to [[graphics processor]]-accelerated 3D rendering. In this first phase, rendering was done indirectly in the [[display server]], leaving some overhead and noticeable speed lagging behind the theoretical maximum. The [[Monster 3D|Diamond Monster 3D]], using the [[Voodoo Graphics]] chipset, was one of the first 3D hardware devices supported by Mesa.

The first true graphics hardware support was added to Mesa in 1997, based upon the [[Glide API]] for the then new [[3dfx]] [[Voodoo Graphics|Voodoo]] I/II [[graphics card]]s and their successors.<ref name="DRI">{{cite web |url=http://dri.sourceforge.net/doc/DRIintro.html |title=Introduction to the Direct Rendering Infrastructure |last=Paul |first=Brian |website=Dri.sourceforge.net |date=10 August 2000 |access-date=25 January 2012 |archive-date=16 March 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180316035937/http://dri.sourceforge.net/doc/DRIintro.html |url-status=dead }}</ref> A major problem of using Glide as the acceleration layer was the habit of Glide to run full screen, which was only suitable for computer games. Further, Glide took the lock of the screen memory, and thus the [[display server]] was blocked from doing any other GUI tasks.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://dri.freedesktop.org/wiki/Glide/ |title=What's the relationship between Glide and DRI? |publisher=dri.freedesktop.org |access-date=25 January 2012}}</ref>